Spunk and Najar had a little spat initiated by Spunk. However, Najar is standing up to Spunk these days and in many cases she is stalking and attacking him first. Spunk doesn’t quite know what to think of being stalked and attacked, since he has been the aggressor up until we introduced Najar into the mix.
When Najar saw the stats from the Word Press “2014 Year in Blogging” she had covered her face. The other two photos are of Spunk trying to win over Najar. That’s an “Evil Schwa” behind Najar.
Word Press gives cutesy analogies about the number of visits to people’s blog’s, like how many times the Sydney Opera House would be sold out from the number of views a blog got in 2014. But let’s get real here! The music video “Gangnam Style” had so many views it broke the counter on Youtube. My blog got 0.00001231161485 views as a percentage of Gangnam Style’s current total views. Which means the number of views my blog got in 2014 stinks, and is statistically insignificant. A more fitting analogy to make my crappy numbers look better would be that the Men’s Room at the top of the escalator at the Louvre has 12 stalls. The number of views my blog got in 2014 would have filled a Men’s Room in the Louvre 2250 times.
I find the top five blogs each year are much more interesting. In 2014, Espresso Fino was number 1. The second most viewed blog was Zipper Spider from 2011. Zipper Spider has been in the top five every year since 2011. The Beauty And The Beer was number 3 in 2014, which came as a surprise to me. But apparently a beautiful woman with a beer is the perfect combination. Number 4 was Portrait of a Young Woman, and Day of the Dead came in at number 5.
Happy New Year!
Meet 6 month old Najar. She’s just joined the Price Family.
No crèche is safe when Romeo is catching a few rays.
I photographed all the animals Christmas Eve, trying to get them to have a “Merry Christmas” look about them. The birds and Spunk were more than willing participants, Diné was okay with it as long as she didn’t have to get off the heater vent under the bed, but Rosencrantz and Guldenstern took quite a bit of coaxing. Blue, the Boa, opted out because she is getting ready to shed — she has milky-blue eyes and she’s a bit cranky — it’s best to leave a 7 foot long boa constrictor alone when she doesn’t want to be photographed.
Spunk helped us un-bag Christmas stuff. He also decided to try his paw at kitty Haiku.
Hack, hack a hairball
This fine and Christmassy day
Chukka, yukka, Uk
A sparrow’s feathers
Freshly regurgitated
Grass freshly eaten’
A better gift none
For the human that I love
Watching where you step
Spunk has started watching Italian music videos. His current favorites are Anna Tatangelo’s “Sensi” (Feelings) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB6QA7snWqk, and Litfiba’s “Squalo” (Shark) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbcYNU71JOo.
In “Squalo” there are a couple of women painted up as skeletons who dance in the darkness for a few seconds at various times throughout the video. Spunk would start pawing at the skeleton figures every time they came on screen. I wonder how he sees the figures that makes him want to touch them.
I put on another Italian music video, but Spunk lost interest soon after it began, jumped down and started playing with his toys on the floor. When I replayed “Sensi”, he bounded across the room, slid up to the computer and intently watched the video again — he seemed to be enamored by Anna.
The lyrics to “Sensi” in Italian and English are available at http://lyricstranslate.com/en/sensi-feelings.html. I did not find an English translation for “Squalo”.
Continuing my adventures in film, I purchased a 4X5 Speed Graphic, Press Camera with money I got for my birthday. I wanted a 4X5 that was more portable, but since field cameras are still pricey, I started looking at press cameras, and decided I liked having the choice of using either the leaf shutter in the lens or the focal plane shutter in the body, and having the option to hand hold the camera.
I ended up with this particular camera because the seller guaranteed that everything worked, and he accepted my offer for the amount of the money I received for my birthday. I got it Wednesday, checked the shutters, the movements, the rangefinders, and indeed everything worked. It was pretty dirty, including the lens, so I took the camera and lens apart, and cleaned everything inside and out. Spunk helped and then participated when I photographed the camera — he wanted to point out the camera’s features and how it works. I looked up the serial numbers on the lens and the camera and it’s a Wartime model produced in 1945.
Thursday morning I went out and took four photos, processed them, and then printed two of the negatives before we went to Thanksgiving dinner at Laurie’s parent’s house in the early afternoon. I used Kodak Tri-X 320, but had the light meter set at ISO 400 and processed the film at ISO 400. I used the leaf shutter in the lens set at 1/400 sec and hand held the camera for the shots. The lens, at 127mm, is fairly wide-angle for a 4X5, therefore, in each photo I was trying to get as close to a group of cranes, and then a group of ducks as possible. The cranes and ducks flew so I snapped the photos of them taking flight, producing my first 4×5, hand-held actions shots.
Another blogger asked for input on what annoys people. One person said people who post photos of cats on their blogs. So here is another annoying photo of a cat in my long tradition of being annoying and posting photos of cats on my blog. This particularly annoying photo is of Laurie carrying Guildenstern around the garden.
Off Center & Not Even 